Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

R ight, she told herself firmly, trying to channel Carmen’s business-like approach to confronting situations. First things first, she needed to get back to her room. If she’d been gone all day, it was possible the hotel staff were missing her — especially as she’d have failed to turn up for the tour she’d been so looking forward to. She wasn’t looking forward to explaining where she’d been, but that problem could wait until she was actually back on the premises… which might be a harder problem than she’d expected. The gates were not only closed, they were shut tight — all her considerable strength wasn’t enough to budge either one, and she exhaled with frustration as she stepped back to give them a calculating look. They weren’t so high, were they? She’d scaled more than a few walls in her time, she certainly had the upper body strength for it… the bars of the gate were each topped with a metal spike, but aside from that there were relatively few hazards.

She had both hands on the bars and was ready to start climbing when a shout from behind her caught her attention. Suddenly feeling like a teenager caught breaking into an abandoned house again, she rocketed away from the gate with a blush rising to her cheeks. Coming down the same path she’d gotten so bafflingly lost on was the silhouette of a person, emerging from the fog with some kind of light source lifted in their right hand. The warm, flickering light put her in mind of a flame — and it was with a jolt of surprise that she realized she was right. As the man emerged through the fog, she saw he was holding a stout stick aloft, with a real flame at its tip.

But that wasn’t all that was old-fashioned about the man. He was wearing what looked like medieval armor, too — the torchlight was glinting from the chainmail that covered his chest, and though a cloak of thick blue fabric covered his arms and much of the rest of him, she could see that there was more armor beneath. To finish off the picture, he had a scabbard hanging at his belt — and one hand resting, with an unmistakable aura of caution, on the hilt that protruded from it.

“Oh, right,” Amelia said after one frozen moment of utter confusion. “You’re one of the actors.”

The man’s dark eyes narrowed, and he studied her for a moment. Thrown by her accent, maybe? A few of the other guests had been surprised to hear an American so far from home. But there was something else on this man’s face as he moved toward her, nodding toward the gates behind her.

“Were you about to scale the walls of Weatherby Manor, lass?”

Despite her disorientation and confusion, she couldn’t help but grin at the man. He deserved full credit for staying in character like this — he was probably on his way to lead a tour or something, but he was clearly already committed to his role. “I’m afraid so,” she said, affecting contrition. “I hope you won’t have to clap me in irons, sir knight.”

He wrinkled his nose at that. “I’m no knight. You’re one of those, aren’t you?”

“One of those what?”

But the knight — or the guard, or whatever he was — clearly wasn’t listening. He strode forward, raising his voice to shout a name, and to her surprise, it wasn’t long before a head popped over the wall. This man had a thick, impressive beard and a metal helmet perched on his head. She hadn’t realized the actors made use of the tops of the walls as well. After a brief and somewhat confusing conversation, using what Amelia assumed were a series of code words designed to discuss misplaced guests without breaking character, the gates squeaked open enough to admit Amelia and the first guard, and the two of them stepped inside the manor grounds again.

“You wait here,” the guard said warningly when Amelia started off in the direction of the manor. “I’ll be fetching someone who can sort you out.”

“That’s okay,” she said quickly, worried she was getting caught up in the performance. “You don’t have to break character or anything, but I got kind of lost in the woods back there and I just want to duck back to the hotel to make sure nobody’s worried about me. But I’ll be back to see all this, for sure.”

The guard sighed, doing an impressively realistic impression of a man being confronted with a task several notches above his pay grade. “Mick? Can you keep her here while I fetch Baldric or someone?”

“Take her with you,” the guard called from the top of the wall, sounding affronted. “Isn’t right to keep a lady out here, especially one dressed like that. She’ll catch a chill.”

The first guard sighed again, then jerked his head in her direction and set off walking in the direction of the manor. She followed, torn between being genuinely chastened by the irate guard’s attitude — and delight at how realistic it all was. She stopped herself from complimenting his outfit, not wanting his grumpy persona to intensify any further, but she took in as much as she could while they were walking, fascinated despite the unusual circumstances. She’d known the staff here committed to the costuming, but this was well beyond what she’d expected.

The manor looked different at night. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what had changed, especially as the guard was hurrying her rapidly past the manor’s facade — was it that she hadn’t actually seen it from outside this late at night before? Instead of going up to the main doors, the guard seemed to be taking her around to one of the side entrances she hadn’t had an opportunity to use yet — maybe he was avoiding interrupting the tour, she reasoned, working to keep up with the man’s long strides. He shuffled her into the building through a side door into a room she didn’t recognize.

“Wait here,” the guard said gruffly, gesturing toward a rather beautiful armchair positioned by the small fireplace. “Warm yourself, and I’ll have one of the maids bring you something hot to drink.”

There was something almost apologetic in his demeanor. Worried he’d pushed the grumpy guard act a little too hard, perhaps? She nodded agreement, though it felt wrong to sit on the armchair he’d indicated, like it was too valuable an antique to be used like this. Could it be an antique? It looked so new. They really had hired the best restorers available, hadn’t they?

The guard left her to her own devices then, slipping off down an unfamiliar corridor that led deeper into the house. It wasn’t long before that door swung open again, though, and a small, elderly woman in a faded apron shuffled in with a tray in her wizened hands. Amelia was a little thrown by the clothing — this was quite a different uniform to the ones the staff she’d met so far had been wearing. The woman set down the tray on a side table by the armchair, then flashed Amelia a look that was equal parts curious and frightened. Was another scene about to begin? But before she could so much as greet the woman, she was on her way back to the door, bowing as she went.

“The Lord and Sir Baldric will be with you presently,” the woman promised.

Amelia nodded, thoroughly mystified. Baldric… that was the name the guards had mentioned, wasn’t it? Perhaps he was the main character in whatever reenactment drama she was currently witnessing. She just wished she felt a little less disoriented and worried about what had befallen her in the woods. There was no doubt in her mind, now, that she’d lost the better part of a day — and there weren’t many explanations for that kind of amnesia that didn’t send a cold chill down a professional fighter’s back. She needed to get checked out by a doctor, the sooner the better.

Those thoughts were making it difficult to focus, and she jumped a little when she realized she was no longer alone in the room. The old woman had left the door ajar, and there was a man lingering in the hall outside, framed by the gap between the door and the doorframe. She guessed at once he was another of the actors, from what he was wearing — which included, most notably, a rather silly wig. He was a tall, rather heavyset man in his mid-forties, dressed like some kind of nobleman… could this be the Lord, she wondered? Perhaps this actor had been cast to play Lord Weatherby himself … though from the portraits she’d seen of the man, the physical resemblance wasn’t exactly top-notch.

Amelia waited for the lingering man to enter the room, toying with the idea of getting to her feet when he entered and trying a curtsy — she wanted to be a good sport, confused or not. But he stayed where he was, lingering in the doorway, his pale blue eyes fixed on her and a faint smirk curling his fat lips unpleasantly. It was a good act, she thought, feeling a very real shiver of disgust move through her. He was doing a bang-on impression of the kind of creeps she’d spent most of her career doing her best to ignore… and right now, that was the last thing she wanted.

“Watch your eyes,” she heard herself snap. It was one of her grandmother’s expressions, and it felt well and truly at home here in this quaint medieval parlor room.

The stranger’s pale eyes widened with surprise for a moment — but then his smirk widened, and he chuckled, not averting his gaze in the least. If anything, she noticed him drop his eyes more pointedly, his gaze roaming across her chest and then down to her legs. It’s an act, she told herself, not liking how quickly her pulse was rising. He must be playing some creepy character, this is all part of it… but as the seconds ticked by and the creep continued to ogle her, she ran out of patience. Act or no act, she was part of this scene, too. And she wasn’t going to let anyone stare at her like that, no matter the context.

“I told you to watch it,” she snapped, rising to her feet and taking a step toward the doorway with her hands in loose fists at her sides. Would he back down, she wondered — the same way the guard had eased up on his grouchy routine? Part of her almost hoped he wouldn’t. She’d like an excuse to rough him up a little — make him think twice about the conclusions he’d clearly drawn about the capabilities of a pretty young woman.

But before the man could react, they were both distracted by the sound of footsteps and raised voices in the hallway. The man in the wig was gone as quickly as he’d arrived, but Amelia didn’t have any time to wonder why. She was too distracted by the men who’d just stepped through the open door… or more specifically, by the man who was sizing her up with the weary, put-upon expression of someone who’d been just about to go to bed. She recognized his face… not only from the portraits, but from the website and the brochures. There was no mistaking who she was looking at.

This was Lord Weatherby. And he was looking at her like she was the biggest problem he’d dealt with all week.