Page 16 of When I Fall in Love (De Piaget #4)

J ennifer reined in Montgomery’s horse, looked at the collection of boulders in front of her, and wondered if now would be the proper time to have a nervous breakdown. It didn’t look like a time gate in front of her, it looked like a bunch of rocks. But Thomas had said something was there and Jamie had confirmed it. At the time, she hadn’t cared. Now, she cared very much. She had to care; it was her last chance. If this didn’t work, she was stuck.

She slipped off Montgomery’s horse, waited until her legs were steady beneath her, then looked again at the day. The sky was full of dark clouds, the wind was chilly, and she thought she might be getting a cold. That had either come from camping out the night before or from too much weeping after she had insisted that Nicholas get a little sleep.

Dawn, firelight, and a gorgeous knight to stare at.

Obviously a very bad combination.

She sniffed and tried to get hold of herself. She wasn’t a crier. She was more apt to go for a run or scrub her bathroom or pour her energy into playing very fast things on her violin. She’d wept more in the past month than she had in her entire life. It was not a good sign.

She patted the pockets of her jeans. Cell phone, keys, credit cards. All residing where they were supposed to. She looked down at herself. She looked the part of a twenty-first-century gal. In fact, it was really easy to just look out over the ocean she could see a mile away from her and imagine that it was the same ocean that found itself in modem England. Honestly, the countryside just didn’t look any different. She half expected to look up and see a plane flying overhead.

But then she made the mistake of glancing behind her.

There, in a little row, stood her escorts. Her medieval escorts.

She wasn’t back in Kansas yet.

She led Montgomery’s horse over to him and handed him the reins. She smiled as best she could. “Thank you,” she said. “Your horse is very well behaved.”

Montgomery nodded, mute.

Jennifer hugged him quickly. “Take care of your brother,” she whispered in his ear, then pulled back and smiled at him. “You know which one.”

“I will,” he promised, then smiled shyly. “I wish you could stay.”

She nodded, but found quite suddenly that she couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat. She turned and hugged John, who actually seemed to be having as much trouble speaking as she was. Then she turned to Miles.

He pulled her into what she could only call a very thorough embrace. She let him hug her far longer than she should have, then pulled back and laughed up at him through her tears.

“You’re terrible.”

“I wish you could stay, too,” he said. “But if not, I think it only right that I kiss you good-bye.”

“Only if it is to be your last act,” Nicholas growled. “Release the poor wench before she hurts you. And if she doesn’t, I will.”

Jennifer smiled at Miles, kissed him on the cheek, then pulled away and turned to look at Nicholas. She didn’t think she could touch him; if she did, she might not be able to let go.

“I have to go,” she said.

He only nodded.

She took a step backward. “You can all ride off now.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. “I’m sure someone will be along for me soon.”

Actually, she wasn’t sure of that at all, but what else was she going to do? Give up? Give in? This had to be the place Thomas had told her about. He’d said it was about two miles north of Artane. Jamie had warned her about the same place when he’d learned she was going to Artane. Jennifer was almost positive this was the same group of big rocks. All she had to do was sit on them and she would be home.

Or so she hoped.

She looked at Nicholas one last time. “Thank you, my lord,” she said. “For the rescues.”

He only nodded.

“You deserve someone spectacular.”

“Hmmm,” was all he said.

“You should go,” she whispered.

He nodded, then gave his brothers shoves in the right direction. Jennifer watched them walk off, then turned away and walked over to the rocks. She sat down. Immediately, a light rain started u p .

She started to swear.

After a while, she wondered if she might be sitting on the wrong rock, so she moved. Actually, she moved several times. There came a point when she realized that she had sat on every single rock there, no matter how small. And she’d felt no hint of a time gate anywhere.

She hadn’t felt it in Farris’s potato field—or what would someday become Farris’s potato field—either. She’d recognized the countryside so she’d known she had been in the right place. Only the place hadn’t been right for her.

She started to feel a little short of breath.

She stood up suddenly, then turned around. Nicholas and his brothers were clustered together, fifty feet away. Miles and the boys had their backs turned to her.

Nicholas was watching her.

Jennifer turned away. They probably thought she’d lost her mind. She didn’t care. Besides, she was going to be home at any moment. She would leave Nicholas de Piaget safely in the past where he could find himself a medieval gal who would be thrilled to have him. She would go back to the future where she would spend ridiculous amounts of time trying to find someone just like him—and failing.

She forced that thought away. She wanted to go home. She wanted sheepskin slippers and hot chocolate on snowy Manhattan evenings. She wanted central air and a fireplace that wasn’t big enough to roast an entire pig on. She wanted clean clothes every day, shampoo, toilet paper, potato chips, and slushies from the local Mini Mart. She wanted loud movies in theaters, her iPod with Rachmaninoff cranked up to the hilt, front-row seats to the New York Philharmonic. She’d had a great time with wide-open spaces and lots of silence in the Middle Ages, but now she wanted the hustle and bustle of her busy, filled-to-the-brim life.

Hell, at the moment, she wanted an umbrella.

She finally sat back down, because she was really tired of standing up. She closed her eyes and imagined she could hear the traffic from the A1.

In time, she realized it was just the roar of the ocean.

And still the drizzle continued. Jennifer felt like she was being misted by an invisible spray bottle that was fiendishly determined to soak through everything she had and leave her hair a frizzy, madly curling mess around her face.

Her stomach growled.

The afternoon continued to wear on. She didn’t dare look behind her to see if the boys had gone. It was enough to just look in front of her and realize that the scenery just wasn’t changing. Not that she’d needed that as confirmation. The gate here wasn’t going to work for her, either.

She was, despite her best efforts, stuck. Stuck hundreds of years out of her time. Stuck with a man who would marry a woman of rank and riches. Stuck in a place where she had no way to make a living, no way to keep herself safe, no way to play anything she loved, no way to let her family know where—or when—she was.

She bowed her head and let the tears drip down her nose.

Maybe she should have known, when she’d found the first time gate destroyed. Maybe she should have known when Farris’s fairy ring didn’t even acknowledge her presence. She definitely knew now that she’d found Thomas’s rocks to be unresponsive.

She pushed herself up to her feet and walked away. She would live and die in the thirteenth century and no one would be the wiser. Her family would never find her because she wouldn’t merit so much as a blip in the de Piaget genealogy, except possibly an entry about a daft wench who had stomped around grassy fields until she’d gone nuts, but Megan probably wouldn’t be looking for that—

“Jennifer?”

She closed her eyes briefly. No, he didn’t say her name the same way his brothers did. Apparently, he’d listened to her closely. For some reason, it was more overwhelming that way.

As if he knew her as well as her family did.

She was startled to realize he was so close to her. He put a cloak around her shoulders. She felt him pull her braid out from underneath it, then put his hands briefly on her shoulders. Then his hands were gone. Jennifer took a deep, unsteady breath.

“I’m sorry,” she managed. “I’ve dragged you all over for no reason.”

“Your kin,” he began slowly, “you have missed meeting them here?”

“So it would seem,” she said. She would have tried to wipe her eyes, but she was afraid that if she did anything but hug herself, she would shatter.

Music. Modem life. Her family.

She couldn’t believe she would never have any of them again.

But she couldn’t believe anything else.

“Perhaps...”

She waited. When he didn’t finish, she took a deep breath. “Perhaps?”

“Perhaps you would care to take your ease at Artane.”

She turned around slowly. “Artane?” she said breathlessly.

“My father’s hall,” he said. “We would not be unwelcome there. We would be safe and dry.”

“It sounds wonderful,” she said. She dabbed at her eyes with her sweater sleeve, but that didn’t do much. She used the comer of Nicholas’s cloak instead. “Wonderful,” she repeated.

He simply stood there and looked at her for so long, she started to get uncomfortable.

“What?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I am simply sorry you have missed your kin. Is there no where else you can search for them?”

The thought of London flitted across her mind, but her failure at Farris’s field was enough to convince her that wasn’t even worth trying. For one thing, the streets wouldn’t be the same and there was no guarantee she would find the same location she’d used to get home from Elizabethan England. And even if she did find the same location, there would be no guarantee that it would work.

She could see that now.

She shook her head. “My home is very, very far away. I am here for a reason I don’t understand.” She looked down at the ground for a very long time. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go home,” she said finally.

“Then stay with me.”

She looked up at him in surprise. “What?”

“Stay with me at Artane,” he said quickly. “It is a beautiful hall, right on the edge of the sea. You can see it there to the south.”

Jennifer looked toward where he was pointing. Yes, that was Artane all right.

She looked at it for a moment or two, then looked up the coast until she came to another castle on her left, quite far away. “And that?” she asked, pointing. “What is that castle there?”

“Raventhorpe. That is the keep of my sister Amanda and her husband.”

She nodded. She’d seen Raventhorpe in the distance before, but it had been just the shell of a keep. She imagined it wasn’t just a shell now.

“We could be home by dark, if we ride hard.”

She turned around to look at him, but she couldn’t see him very well. Her eyes were swimming with tears. “Thank you.”

He only shook his head. “ ’Tis nothing.” He paused. “Perhaps another solution will present itself in a day or two.”

“Sure,” she managed, blinking rapidly. She doubted it, but she wasn’t going to say as much.

“Artane?” he asked, reaching for her hand.

She nodded and walked with him over to where his brothers stood with their horses. He stopped in front of his horse, but kept hold of her hand. Jennifer looked at him, surprised.

“Am I not riding Montgomery’s horse?”

“I thought perhaps you should ride with me.”

She managed a smile. “Do I look that rattled?”

He nodded gravely.

She shivered. “I think you might be right.” She turned and looked at Nicholas’s stirrup; it was about level with her belly button—and she wasn’t exactly short.

“Allow me to aid you,” he said, cupping his hands for her.

She found herself boosted up into his saddle as if she weighed nothing. How he managed to swing up behind her, she didn’t know, but he did. His brothers were already in the saddle, ready to go.

“Home, lads,” he said to his brothers. He took the reins from her, put his arm around her waist, and clicked at his horse. “Hold on,” he said into her ear.

She shivered, and she suspected it wasn’t really from the chill and the rain. She put her hands over his arm that held her and nodded. Once they were on their way, she let herself weep. The wind whipping in her eyes was perhaps cover enough.

“You’re getting me wet.”

Jennifer dragged her free arm across her eyes. She couldn’t say anything.

He didn’t seem to expect her to.

T hey reached the castle just after dark. Men greeted Nicholas as he rode up the way. Jennifer considered worrying about the fact that she was wearing jeans in a medieval setting, but the only light came from torches so she supposed she wouldn’t have that much attention paid to her.

Then she found she had no more time to worry. She was too busy being flipped out by the sight of Artane, and a very medieval Artane indeed, in front of her.

She looked at the stairs and half expected to see Megan come bounding down them. It was simply mind-blowing to think her sister was staying inside that same castle right then.

Well, eight centuries from right then.

Nicholas stopped his horse in front of the stables and leaped down to the ground. He held up his arms for her. She let him help her down to the ground, then stood there and tried to keep herself from completely losing it. She had to take several deep breaths.

She wished they had helped.

Nicholas looked at her searchingly. “Are you unwell?”

Jennifer struggled to find something coherent to say. “I’m fine,” she said, finally. “Artane is ... magnificent.”

“It makes Wyckham look a little shabby by comparison, doesn’t it?”

“No, Wyckham is charming,” she said, trying to keep her breathing steady. “You need some furniture, though.”

He took her hand and led her toward the hall. “I daresay. Montgomery, you and John see to the horses.”

“And me?” Miles asked politely.

“You keep out of my way.”

Jennifer walked with Nicholas across the courtyard and up the stairs, stairs that she had walked up before, stairs her sister was probably walking up right now in a different century.

She had to take several more deep breaths.

“Jennifer?”

“I’m fine,” she wheezed.

He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t press her.

“Food,” he said, pulling her arm through his. “Then a decent bed. You’ll feel more yourself tomorrow.”

She suspected it would take a great deal more than that to feel more herself, but she wasn’t going to say as much. She let him open the door for her, then stepped into Artane’s great hall.

Another deep breath was called for.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t recognize the place. Though she couldn’t say she’d spent a lot of time there, she had visited a time or two. She knew where the kitchen was, where the lord’s solar was, what the great hall looked like.

Only it didn’t usually look as it did now—as if it had had a medieval makeover.

Nicholas led her over to the fireplace on the right-hand side of the hall. A dark-haired man sat there, but he leaped to his feet in astonishment at the sight of them. He clapped Nicholas on the shoulder briefly, then turned his attention to her.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“This is Jennifer McKinnon,” Nicholas said. He looked at her. “My brother Robin.”

Jennifer looked at Nicholas’s older brother. Older perhaps was misleading. She didn’t know the particulars, of course. but to her eye they looked identical, except for their coloring, which they had to have inherited from their mothers. They were obviously the same age.

There were, perhaps, a few more subtle differences. While Nicholas seemed, despite his recent irritations, to be fairly laid back, Robin simply radiated intensity. Jennifer found herself being scrutinized in a dizzying fashion. In a matter of seconds, she knew her clothes had been examined, her looks assessed, and the fact that her hand was tucked in the crook of Nicholas’s elbow digested.

Robin smiled.

Well, apparently, she had passed some sort of muster. Robin barked at Miles to vacate the chair he’d just collapsed in and leave it for her.

Jennifer sat, grateful for something that didn’t shift underneath her.

“My lady,” Robin said pleasantly, “you must be hungry. I’m sure there’s something left from supper.”

“Wonderful,” Nicholas said, sitting down next to her. “Why don’t you go fetch it for us?”

“Why don’t you?” Robin suggested. “I’ll keep her company here.”

“So will I,” Miles said, dragging up a chair on her right. “She’s endured Nicholas’s foulness for almost a month, Rob. I daresay she deserves a respite of some kind.”

Jennifer watched Nicholas glare first at Robin, then at Miles. Then he slapped his hands on his knees, stood up, and pulled her up out of her chair.

“I don’t dare leave you with either of them,” he muttered. “Come with me, if you will, and we’ll make a brief foray into the larder.”

Jennifer went with him, actually rather relieved to be with him instead of facing more scrutiny from his brother. She felt tremendously conspicuous in her clothes. She was grateful for Nicholas’s cloak, because it hid at least a bit of what she was wearing, and for the forgiving light of fire and torch that obscured the rest.

Nicholas was greeted enthusiastically by the chef and provided with a hearty meal. He took his burdens and led her back out to the great hall. She tried not to shudder as she sat down next to him at the high table.

It was, as it happened, the same very antique, very rare table that Megan was probably sitting at right then.

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath and reaching for her wine. “I can do this.”

“Do what?”

She looked at Robin who had sat down on her right. She managed a smile. “Breathe,” she admitted.

He laughed. “Poor girl. Has Nick been that trying?”

She shook her head. “He’s been wonderful, actually.”

“Indeed,” Robin said, his eyes twinkling. “I can’t imagine that.”

“Robin,” Nicholas warned.

Robin ignored him. “I’ll leave you in peace tonight, since you’ve just arrived, but tomorrow I will pester you with all sorts of questions as to why you’re here, why Nicholas is so protective, and why Miles can’t take his eyes off you. Oh, and how you’ve managed to survive what has to have been at least some time in Nick’s company without having your humors soured—”

“Rob, shut up,” Nicholas growled.

“Don’t want to,” Robin said cheerfully.

“Do you care for aid in that?” Nicholas asked pointedly.

Jennifer held up her hands quickly. “I beg you both not to fight with me in the middle.”

Robin laughed and poured her wine. “I see now that you have indeed passed a bit of time with the lads. Have they misbehaved?”

“Only Miles,” she said with a smile.

“Ha!” Miles exclaimed. “I was my usual wonderful self, spreading good cheer and encouraging the sun to shine whenever possible.”

Jennifer caught the murderous look Nicholas threw his younger brother and couldn’t help but smile. How lovely it must be for them to have each other. She felt that way about her siblings. They were her fans, her critics, her best friends.

Several centuries away.

A few more deep breaths were called for after that.

Nicholas put his hand over hers briefly. “You’re tired. Allow me to see you to my sister’s chamber.”

She nodded unsteadily. “Thank you. I think that might be best.”

He rose, then helped her to her feet. Jennifer looked at Robin.

“Thank you, Lord Robin,” she began.

He shook his head. “ ’Tis just Robin. You may call me Artane if you’re feeling particularly fawning.”

Nicholas snorted. “He’ll not earn that title until our sire is dead and that won’t happen for years. Do not flatter him. Artane, indeed.”

Jennifer winced as he took her right hand. He stopped and looked down.

“Does it still pain you?”

“Not so much,” she said. She managed a smile. “You did good work on it. Another few days and I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

If only she could have said the same thing for the rest of herself.

She walked up the stairs with him. In time, he stopped in front of a door.

“My sister Isabelle’s chamber,” he said. “She’ll be pleased that you used it.”

Jennifer nodded, then felt her eyes start to burn. “I can’t begin to thank you—”

“Don’t,” he interrupted. “In truth, I did little.” He opened the door, fetched a candle, then lit it with one of the torches in the hallway. He handed it to her. “Sleep if you can.”

She nodded, then went inside the bedroom.

She froze.

She heard Nicholas shut the door behind her, but she couldn’t look back. She stood in the middle of the room until she thought she could move without shattering.

She walked across the floor and put the candle down on a table. She leaned on the casement of the window. She didn’t need daylight to know what the view would look like. She didn’t need a lamp to know that the corner to her left was the perfect place for an armoire or that there was space enough between the armoire and the wall to stash her violin.

There was nothing quite like staying in the same room she’d been staying in before—only almost 800 years earlier.

She kicked off her shoes, shucked off her jeans, and crawled beneath the covers. She had to get back up and blow out the candle, but that wasn’t hard. She got back in bed, closed her eyes, and let the irony wash over her and continue on its way.

She didn’t have to think about anything, she just had to sleep.

At least she had a bed, if only temporarily. It could have been so much worse.

She didn’t want to consider how much worse it could have been.

She suspected she would learn the extent of that soon enough.